TALE OF MA’AN THE SON OF ZAIDAH.[133]

It is told of Ma’an bin Záidah that, being out one day a-chasing and a-hunting, he became athirst but his men had no water with them; and while thus suffering behold, three damsels met him bearing three skins of water;——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

Now when it was the Two Hundred and Seventy-first Night,[134]

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that three girls met him bearing three skins of water; so he begged drink of them, and they gave him to drink. Then he sought of his men somewhat to give the damsels but they had no money; so he presented to each girl ten golden-piled arrows from his quiver. Whereupon quoth one of them to her friend, “Well-a-day! These fashions pertain to none but Ma’an bin Zaidah! so let each one of us say somewhat of verse in his praise.” Then quoth the first:—

He heads his arrows with piles of gold, ✿ And while shooting his foes is his bounty doled:
Affording the wounded a means of cure, ✿ And a sheet for the bider beneath the mould!

And quoth the second:—

A warrior showing such open hand, ✿ His boons all friends and all foes enfold:
The piles of his arrows of or are made, ✿ So that battle his bounty may not withhold!

And quoth the third:—

From that liberal hand on his foes he rains ✿ Shafts aureate-headed and manifold:
Wherewith the hurt shall chirurgeon pay, ✿ And for slain the shrouds round their corpses roll’d.[135]

And there is also told a tale of

133.  A rival in generosity to Hatim: a Persian poet praising his patron’s generosity says that it buried that of Hatim and dimmed that of Ma’an (D’Herbelot). He was a high official under the last Ommiade, Marwán al-Himár (the “Ass,” or the “Century,” the duration of Ommiade rule) who was routed and slain in A.H. 132 = 750. Ma’an continued to serve under the Abbasides and was a favourite with Al-Mansúr. “More generous or bountiful than Ka’ab” is another saying (A. P., i. 325); Ka’ab ibn Mámah was a man who, somewhat like Sir Philip Sidney at Zutphen, gave his own portion of drink while he was dying of thirst to a man who looked wistfully at him, whence the saying “Give drink to thy brother the Námiri” (A. P., i. 608). Ka’ab could not mount, so they put garments over him to scare away the wild beasts and left him in the desert to die. “Scatterer of blessings” (Náshir al-Ni’am) was a title of King Malik of Al-Yaman, son of Sharhabil, eminent for his liberality. He set up the statue in the Western Desert, inscribed “Nothing behind me,” as a warner to others.

134.  Lane (ii. 352) here introduces, between Nights cclxxi and ccxc, a tale entitled in the Bresl. Edit. (iv. 134.) “The Sleeper and the Waker,” i.e. the sleeper awakened; and he calls it:—The Story of Abu-l-Hasan the Wag. It is interesting and founded upon historical fact; but it can hardly be introduced here without breaking the sequence of The Nights. I regret this the more as Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal of New York has most obligingly sent me an addition to the Breslau text (iv. 137) from his MS. But I hope eventually to make use of it.

135.  The first girl calls gold “Tibr” (pure, unalloyed metal); the second “Asjad” (gold generally) and the third “Ibríz” (virgin ore, the Greek ὄβρυζον). This is a law of Arab rhetoric never to repeat the word except for a purpose and, as the language can produce 1,200,000 (to 100,000 in English) the copiousness is somewhat painful to readers.